What is the point of saving an Empire during a game?

[Zanthor]

I noticed that I can save an empire that has experience any time during a game. What is the point of this? I tried to start a new game with this empire but it said it has too many Racial points. I have everything up to the top including the racial points set at 5000. There is no setting higher. How can I load this empire into a new game? Is that possible? Better Question... Is that Legal? To which Lord Sidious would reply?? I will make it legal.

Any insight on this topic would be appreciated.

[This message has been edited by Zanthor (edited 27 June 2001).]

In new game player settings - select racial points for new player to 5000. Then you can add an empire with 5000 points used. You have to edit the empire and adjust the point balance to zero to play with 2000 or 3000.

I have 239826 racial experience accumulated and am rated "old". I find that the AI is more willing to make treaties and less prone to break them now that I have lots of experience. They know that I will whip their behinds if they start trouble. You get racial experience for building ships and bases. You get 100 experience for every colony you plant. I have not checked what else gives experience, there may be some minor contributions from other things. The fastest way to get experience is to play a big map, make all the AI but one neutral surrender, then colonize all the planets on the map and save your empire. Repeat on another map etc.....

I already posted my empire on another thread. If somebody else has a higher experience then they could post their empire files on this thread for newbies to download. On second thought I will just post mine here too. It may make it easier for you to use mine. Just edit the empires to be whatever you want for your race, and use my experience level.

[Nitram Draw]

Another benefit is that you save you ship designs. I use this so I don't have to redesign my colony ship, scout and transport every game (I always build these three type early).
Experiance and racial points are two different things. Experianced is earned by playing with and saving an empire. There is suppose to be some small benefit. Racial points are used to set up your race. They can be edited at the start of any game. How many racial points are allowed in a game is set up in the player settings screen.

[Suicide Junkie]

I would really like a Save/Load ship designs option. I often play a different race each time, and it would be nice to be able to dump in the colony ships and basic warship/base/unit designs, then modify if nessesary. I did that all the time in SE3.

With the way it works in SE4, the designs follow your race, so if you're playing a new race, you have nothing, and if you're starting a new (low tech) game with an old race, you have tons of unbuildable ship designs cluttering up your list. And all of the low tech designs were obsoleted and deleted from your designs by the end of the high tech game, you you end up with nothing useful.

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[Nitram Draw]

Yeah, that's a pain. It's why I only save those trhee designs. Guess I'll always be a newborn race.

[PurpleRhino]

It also keeps all the options that you set with that empire... including strats, ship & colony types, selected tabs on windows, and bunches of other things... including what everybody else said.